Saturday, October 16, 2010

[Your editor would like to start by apologizing for being late. Your editor knows that you are used to Carl "Won't Return My Phone Calls" Wheeler's lazy "oh hey the day before the next comic is up is good enough for me!" style, but we are aiming to be prompt. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of today's poster, a mysterious and terrible monster known only as "shufti." Your editor hopes you are somehow capable of enjoying it. Your editor certainly was not. -Ed.]

Welcome to every nerd's wet dream, where "experimental" operating systems (whatever that means) don't have anything to do with internet connections, every office has a stereotypical Linux girl ready and waiting to respond to your mighty call of "Shibboleet", and "lingering problems from sever moves" can be fixed in, like, three seconds.

I mean, seriously, a stuffed Linux penguin and a poster of xkcd's version of Richard Stallman? If she knew, like, two programming languages and treated everyone who was like her as some sort of secret society, complete with password, she'd be the stereotypical xkcd girl too.

...Oh wait.

Hilarious wish-fulfillment aside, this is, at its core, yet another comic frustrated that the world isn't good with technology. We've seen those before. It's also a comic about how superior people who use Linux are. We've seen that before. Hell, we've even seen the exact inverse of this comic - remember #278? Hey guys, if you use Linux you are so smart and your tech support is so awesome that getting bad tech support for a Linux distro is a HILARIOUS concept because of how IMPOSSIBLE it would be. Oh, and, hey, remember that time Randy himself sent a check to Verizon for $0.002 because of a HILARIOUSLY bad tech support phone call? Remember how HILARIOUS that all was? Well hold on to that thought, because I need to barf.

...

Alright, I'm back. You know, I'm pretty much constantly confused why any group, nerds or geeks or otherwise, would feel the need to insist that their group is "better" than another group. I get chauvinism; giving opportunities to people like yourself over people not like yourself is basic human behavior. I get the juvenile reasoning behind superiority complexes; "if you're not 'better', you're 'worthless'" is exactly the sort of thing an insecure adolescent would think. See, I just don't get why this juvenility is so damn pervasive even amongst post-pubescent groups. I'm going to say something that'll probably surprise you - I think Randy is a pretty smart dude.[The views contained in this post belong solely to shufti, who is a wretched fiend and must be wiped from the face of the earth, and do not necessarily reflect those of Aloria and Rob, God-Queen and King of Hatred -Ed.]. Broadly speaking, in fact, I think he's probably a smarter dude than I am [This, however, is true. -Ed.]. Randy's got a physics degree, he's worked at NASA, knows several programming languages, and has a great aptitude for technology. Hell, he's even written some short fiction that was pretty good. Me? I'm just some undergraduate going for an English degree. I run a rarely-updated flash fiction blog and a somewhat-more updated blog dedicated to remixing xkcd. The combined hits for both of those blogs over their entire lifespans probably don't even come close to the hits any single xkcd comic gets on any single day. Why is it that Randall is the one who feels the need to keep asserting how awesome he is, while I'm the one content when I get one or two constructive responses to some poem I throw up [BLAAARGH -Ed.] on my Facebook?

I know what a lot of you will say - he's famous for a horrible comic which is causing him seven levels of existential torment, etc. etc. I'm sure that's at least partially why. But that can only be significant if his standard for legitimacy is still tied to beliefs he should have outgrown by the time he started working through college. And that's my question - why didn't it? And why didn't it for so many others, including so many of xkcd's current fan base? Comics like this (and the slaveringsupport it soconsistentlygets) just make me sad for exactly that reason. [They also make your editor sad because they suck, horribly. -Ed.]

To: Randall MunroeCC: xkcd fanbase

You are smart in your own right. You don't need to prove this to anybody. You're only holding yourself back by forcing other people to deal with your own issues.

(Two notes: one, I'm not railing against people with legitimate social disorders like SAD, and two, I'm not saying that all fans of xkcd are socially retarded basement-dwellers. All I'm saying is that I wish that Randall and those like Randall could learn to see more value in themselves and others without obsessively clinging to the metric of peer approval.)

There was so much wrong with this comic that I actually feel cheated that so little was said here.

The smart tech support was, of course, because Randall can pretend that not only are cute, interesting, internet savvy girls real, but they are within vision range of any given cubicle of any given technical support station.

The comic basically is mocking the fact that Technical support people have a script, even though one would assume that, a good portion of the time, the calls are from technically inept people whose problems can be solves as simply as "restart it". So it is not only time saving but completely rational to go off the script. It is designed to work the best with the most people. Randall assuming that he could make a better system is hubris bordering on sheer egocentrism.

Besides, what kind of jerk argues with the person who is trying to give you technical support? I mean, even if that person is not being as helpful as they can be, they are trying to be nice to you. Don't be the guy they tell their friends about.

This all accumulates into probably the worst and most cliched punchline of all time, which is it was all a dream. Why bother? Why did it have to be a dream? What does that add, besides reminding us all that Randall operates on a "Bad Two and a Half Men episode" writing standard? It is useless. Try harder.

So. In conclusion. I believe we should try our damndest to make sure that we point out these things. Because XKCD isn't bad in the broad, obvious ways. It doesn't kill people, and its humor isn't outright insulting or awful or morally reprehensible. But for every comic, there are many, many ways it is poorly made, poorly conceived, and poorly delivered. While 806 may not have given us pictures of vaginas while we were at work, it certainly is a dreadfully, awfully, terrible made comic. And we must note this, mark it, and write it down in this blog. Hopefully he'll either improve or he'll stop. I'm thinking it'll be the latter long before the former.

shufti, I feel compelled to some modicum, or perhaps modica, of compassion and empathy towards, if only because 1) you seem like a pretty decent and level-headed and, yes, smart sort of person 2) Rob took the opportunity to utterly savage you parenthetically, but, dude, did you feel cheated or what by the vitriol in 805's comments? Because, really, you shouldn't have. Lay into the guy. That's what we're here for.

CAPTCHA: gogywart. I feel no need to add to the awesomeness of this 'word.'

I knew this was a dream when I saw XKCD TECH GIRL levitating in her chair--what? His art is always like that? Oh...

But, besides that, this comic is basically, "WOMEN, AND LINUX/eXpErImEnTaL OS USERS (in that order) ARE SO MUCH FUCKING SMARTER; LOOK AT THIS SAD PLEBEIAN--READING A GOD DAMN SCRIPT, HAHAHA. I KNOW A WORD: SHIBBOLETH!"

Also, some things I noticed (of possibly little-to-no importance): XKCD TECH GUY is hip enough to have a wireless headset with his phone... In fact this guy has only a desk, his headset, and a phone. XKCD TECH GODDESS, on the other hand, has merely a stuffed penguin, a laptop, headset and unseen poster of XKCD GOD RICHARD STALLMAN. Also, her headset changes between frames.

I would like to be the first to post that Rob is a fat, lonely bastard who should be defenestrated something proper (and not behind the privacy of closed parentheses either).

@Anon 8:44

Unfortunately I didn't feel the need to rehash, like, EVERYTHING that Carl and Rob and the rest have ever said. I'm sorry that apparently "cheated" you. I guess I will just have to hang my head in shame for not being able to validate your views for you.

By the way, I would like to point out that hubris *IS* sheer egocentrism. Just so you know.

@Gryffilion

There would be more vitriol, but it dried up a good bit by the time I finished posting over on my blog. I recommend going over there if you want to see more swearing and seething hatred. Or, alternatively, be in IRC when the latest xkcd comes up and I go through my obligatory "FFFFUUUU" moment. Still, I *did* call Randy emotionally stunted and insecure. That has to count for *something*.

Liza: Hi you're through to Liza at customer service.Mr Munroe: My computer is broken.Liza: In what way?Mr Munroe: My computer is broken.Liza: ...And?Mr Munroe: It doesn't work. Could you get someone who isn't a complete retard, sugar? Preferably a man?Liza: Uh...Mr Munroe: Not that women aren't as good as men or anything. I'm all for womens' rights and shit. You hot?Liza: Sir, I'm not-Mr Munroe: Aw fuck it. SHIBBOLETH!Liza: What?Mr Munroe: SHIBBOLETH! SHIBBOLETH!

It was also listed in the comments to the 805, but the fellow in the fifth panel does seem to have a stick figure erection... i keep trying to see it as something else, an arm across his lap, a leg cocked up (no pun intended). It's the two faces turning into the vase picture that i just can't turn into the vase!!! Why does call center dude have an erection?! He is looking at the tech guru girl, do girls who like stuffed linux penguins and bearded swordwielders turn him on? I mean yeah they turn me on, but i'm pretty sure i'm just twisted. Anyway the erection ruins a comic i might have almost liked.

@ randy's truly awfully shitty art, specifically panel 5: There is no way that is anything but a boner, or randy having a stroke while drawing. Look at it up close- all the limbs are accounted for. The only other explanation is that Hair Bro has an additional forearm attached to one of his hands, or he has a gigantic thick throbbing cock. perhaps an unconscious slip, showing what randy really thinks about the hypothetical ignorant-douchebag-who-inexplicably (to randy and his ilk)-gets-laid?

I thought at first that maybe people were looking at one of the doodled-on penises that xkcdexplained likes doing, when you first started talking about it. then more people started mentioning it and I went to XKCD and found that Randy has given tech support man a giant raging boner.

I am not a computer nerd, and I am alright with that. I'm just saying, of ALL the possible OSes to pick, he chose "Haiku" to give pleasure to its few proud followers, and any new followers resulting will probably just say "I like the name Haiku" as justification for a few days. The first people are, with little to no doubt, computer geeks. The second group are not and will shortly revert to their commercial Windows OS [or Macs and tell their friends that they're "edgy like that"].

Really, I just don't get the whole open source OS infatuation. I am a bigot when it comes to OSes, but I am admitting that here and now.

Also, there are more problems here than the choice of "Haiku" -- keep on topic!

Apparently Randall misses the fact that "ah, young love" is a phrase most commonly used in a sarcastic fashion for the very sort of reason that he's ridiculing it there.

As for the alt-text... do you think he could ever give up on his contempt for soft fields of knowledge and maybe have a few sessions with a psychologist? Those of us who aren't desperately lonely are perfectly realistic about what we mean by "love."

Wow, 807 is an astoundingly bad effort. He's put in some decent ones lately (I liked the pumpkin carving one and apparently was the only person in the world to laugh at Paradise City), but this one (a) has no joke and (b) has no insight either.

I can vaguely imagine a good comic based around the theme of the naivety of youthful romantic experiences, but this ain't it.

I actually quite like the alt text of the new one. It is certainly true. But yeh... old idea and terrably executed. Was there any hint they were 'young' beofore the punch line text? No there wasn't which meant it was a nother observation not a joke and not funny.

Man, I never though I'd post about XKCD again... but talk about perfect timing. I just got out of a two year relationship I was engaged in.

In fact it reminds me of this comic: http://xkcd.com/291/

I want to punch my screen in. It's too fucking true. Especially the line "I bet no two people in the history of the world..." I used to know better. I used to tell myself "Love isn't enough to work." But I wanted my last relationship to prove that wrong. It was the only factor making it work. Then she dropped the ball, and basically could have saved us a lot of heartache and grief if she would have just simply told herself and me that she wasn't ready to be serious. I told her a million times it's okay to wait. RAGE. Why woman... WHY!

Randall, I don't know how you fucking do it, but you mention things that at least I, and I'm sure thousands others, think about it on the same wavelength. At least I know I'm not alone there.

806 - The best part of this was until I just checked out xkcdsucks. I genuinely thought the first 6 panels were the entire comic because at my resolution, the first two rows perfectly fit into my RSS feed reading panel. As a result I thought the punchline was just "haha, if you ask for the Linux nerd you will get your problem fixed immediately as opposed to the dumbasses they normally hire". It was wishful but slightly amusing.

The full comic is in some ways worse, shibboleet, tech support backdoors, etc. and I was inclined to say the first 6 panels only were better than the full comic, but while it doesn't bring the "funny" per se in the way Randy intended, the full 9 panels do kind of bring a dark humor if you just think about how hilarious it is that geeky Randy would dream about such a thing. Also, there was a bit of "funny" brought when I saw the last panel as a literal wet dream. At first I just thought it was his frustration at it not being true.

807 - LOL Randy is frustrated because Megan left him for some guy that she had more in common with and who did not over analyze their relationship

Maybe Randall would have a girlfriend if he stopped being such a dick. Also, I don't think we romanticize "young love". As far as I know, there isn't anything more transient and unstable than young love.

Oh, and there he goes. Smug McSmuggy Munroe is above such human feelings like "love", you see. No, siree, he doesn't need that over-romanticized shit. He can live perfectly well fantasizing and obsessing over the same woman again and again, while the rest of us fools are pursuing happiness with other people, even if those relationships aren't perfect. It must have something to do with people in general not being perfect, but Randall "God Himself" Munroe has no time for that. He's too busy scribbling badly proportioned stick figures with captions.

Seriously: only good thing in this "comic" is that it has a landscape. It sort of adds to the image. Besides that? Utter lameness!

Oh, and thank you Cap'n: I went through a "phase" and dated someone who would literally say "For the win!" and "epic" and by the end of the relationship I started thinking they had some serious social problems or something. I now think that of basically anyone who says these things out loud along the vein of "geekness is cool!"

And anonymous344, I will just give you one counter-proof because at least your troll is slightly different from the standard trolls [well, it's basically three trolls rolled into one, so bonus??], and I kinda like your cheesy "stop don't-ing" line.

XKCD is NOT epic in every sense of the word because the standard XKCD comic turned out is one panel. Latest XKCD? 3 lines. I don't care if he does likeomgtotally roll out some crap posters occasionally, and then proceed to advertize the shit out of them. Say THOSE are epic, and you know what? En masse we don't dislike those posters as much as the standard comic because yeah, it shows SOME effort. Not always a lot [see his latest internet diagram], but more than, say, 807. But XKCD in general? Nope. If you want aesthetically pleasing representations of information, kindly direct yourself to Information Is Beautiful. Afterwards, come back to Randall's scrawled map of the internet and tell me that Randall's twice-a-year made-for-sale posters are "epic".

"Epic" should only ever be used before the word "Poem" or you're doing it wrong [no, really, any other usage: 96% chance you're making yourself sound functionally illiterate].

I'm not so sure we romanticize young love; rather, we romanticize FALLING in love (which happens to be manifested most often in young couples). And you know why we do it? Because even if it's illusory and transient, falling in love is probably one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. There's a reason so many romantic films exist. There's a reason so many songs are about falling in love. It's because when you're in that state, you're literally obsessed with it and with your partner. It's a freaking big deal.

Yes, that feeling won't last forever; even people who are married for half a century aren't in that "fallen in love" state. It would be too exhausting to keep it up. And yes, after a breakup, you often look back bitterly, thinking, "Wow, I was really an idiot there. What caused me to do all that?" I'll tell you what. You were in love. It's darn powerful, and that's why we romanticize it.

If any thing, young love is intense and mesmerizing(and Gamer2k4 gives some good insight on that), but it seldom lasts. The thousands of cliché "long married couples who hate each other" are there to prove that.

@Mole: In Twilight, Bella asks Edward to kill her and make her a vampire. So technically they both end up dead then, too. It's perhaps even worse because they've romanticized WANTING to be dead and with your lover -- the act, not just the state.

And I seriously thought this comic was going somewhere about those darn indy hipsters whose sole romantic connection is based on "liking the same band". Which makes a good story but a poor ACTUAL relationship. Yes, this is personal experience talking.

Oh, and knock out that "perhaps" in the first line. As I've said before, I enjoy Twilight but I'm not deluding myself into thinking it is actually good -- it is without doubt worse as a piece of literature than most things you can name. Well, except for some raunchy sex fantasies, 'cause those bring a whole new level to "failure to suspend disbelief" and "jarring different levels of prose".

One little cuddlefish mentioned how cool it was to view romance from a Martian's point of view. After which I thought to myself: "why yes, yes it would be COUGH http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2030#comic COUGH"

Raven: "I am not a computer nerd, and I am alright with that. I'm just saying, of ALL the possible OSes to pick, he chose "Haiku" to give pleasure to its few proud followers,"

Then again, that's what he always does with memes and references.

"Really, I just don't get the whole open source OS infatuation. I am a bigot when it comes to OSes, but I am admitting that here and now."

"Really, I just don't get the whole OS infatuation." Fixed that for you, because, really, this phenomenon isn't restricted to free/OSS OSes.

"Also, there are more problems here than the choice of "Haiku" -- keep on topic!"

Just commenting on what bugged me ;-)

"Randall thinks in Binary absolutes, though, emulating his beloved computers. It is complete, or it is nothing!!!"

Don't ya tell me. This, along with the misuse and following alteration of the word "multi-tasking", is what bugs me about most with people using tech terms (for things they were not meant to be used (and might be incorrect or confusing) for).

In other news: Randall knows jack shit about programming, thank you very much.

3:44: Huhahahahah.

Mole: "He can live perfectly well fantasizing and obsessing over the same woman again and again, while the rest of us fools are pursuing happiness with other people, even if those relationships aren't perfect."

Repeat OffendersThese categories of comics get made ALL THE FREAKING TIME and to prove it, I categorized them. So if you're thinking, yeah, he makes a shitload of dumb internet meme jokes, no, it's not just you.

These have changed over time - the dead horses he is consistently beating now are not the same as those from a year ago. You can see all of them, old and new, over here.• More like, SEXkcd!• All my relationships seem to end in despair...• Look everyone! I know of some COMMON JOKES OF THE INTERNET!• We're quirky...and so is our relationship!

The girl is sitting alone at a computer, and maybe it's a dude instead."I like that song" is replaced by "I've heard of that middle school math formula".The second sentence remains as is."Young Love" is replaced by Randall Munroe.

The fact that he suggested an idealized xkcd Linux girl was the only one that could solve problems bothered me, as did the random Haiku reference.

Oh, and it wasn't funny.

However, calling an ISP for technical support has always a painful experience for me. Specifically ISPs, I've never had a problem with technical support elsewhere, maybe because they used their knowledge instead of a script (but still probably weren't hot xkcd-loving Linux geeks).

ah....A reference to previous strips, computer issues, and linux glorification....See, you're jaded, stuck-up and technologically ignorant adults. The people who read and enjoy this--from my perspective, me and a bunch of nerdy highschool friends (I'm the only girl I know who reads this)-- this is funny. His graphs are funny. His young romance remarks are funny. Anything scientific is interesting.Its a young, nerdy thing, and you are walking all over it. Fuck you.

Randall is making fun of stereotypes and that's bad because you feel insulted? This blog initially sets the bar so low for xkcd that when a new strip is up they just come up with stuff to fit it in that xkcdsucks mold. I just don't get it, because it very effectively nullifies 90 % of all the remarks.

I have a somewhat suspicious feeling that this entire comic grew from the word "Shibboleet" - an utterly hilarious play on the word "Shibboleth", meaning some sort of distinguishing practice that could be used as identification, while tying it into L337 speak! Why do I think that this pun may have been the driving force for this comic? Because I suspect that Randall, like I, learnt this word very recently - it's used and described in the latest Terry Pratchett book, I Shall Wear Midnight. The train of thought is fairly obvious from there: what sort of context would "Shibboleet" be most hilarious in? Oh, I know, it is a password itself, for people too smart to be passed around by L1 Customer Support and who should go straight to L3!

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.